In February 2009 Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica introduced a new series of editorials under the working title of “As I Remember It”, in which eminent psychiatrists reflect on their careers and the issues that have been important to them.

Dr. Max Fink is best known for his research and support of convulsive therapy (ECT) since he began his research career in 1954. His 1979 text Convulsive Therapy and the more recent updates in 1999 and 2009 are standard texts. He established the journal Convulsive Therapy (now Journal of ECT) in 1985.

Less well known are his pioneering studies of pharmaco-EEG -- the impact of psychoactive drugs on the human scalp-recorded electroencephalogram. The introduction of LSD, chlorpromazine, imipramine, and other psychoactive agents sent tremors through clinical psychiatry, kindling studies to identify psychoactive agents, their clinical targets, and effective dosing. Using digital computer methods to quantify EEG changes, Dr. Fink studied the profiles of more than 80 compounds establishing the principle of the association of CNS effects and human interactive behavior, a principle that conflicted with animal pharmacology where dissociation of EEG and behavior was dogma. In this reminiscence, he describes the excitement of the early clinical psychopharmacologists as they struggled to develop a science. Click here to listen.

Dr. Fink is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology Emeritus at Stony Brook University in New York and during the past two decades has published extensively on the psychopathology of the syndromes of catatoniaand melancholia.

Sir David Goldberg has during his remarkable career, starting in the 1950s, continuously taken a clear and visible leadership in psychiatry, in specific within areas of great importance: mental illness services in psychiatry health care, mental illnesses in the community and mental illness services in developing countries. At present, he is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Psychiatry being active within the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the revision for DSM-V and ICD-11. In 1997 he was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II.

Prof. Jules Angst is Mr. Affective Disorder. He is highly esteemed in the scientific and clinical communities broadly, and is especially known for his longitudinal follow-up studies on affective disorders. He has contributed to an outstanding degree to our knowledge about the course of illness and comorbidity. His work is now essential for clinical work especially regarding prediction of the course and outcome of affective disorders.